Eagle Eye Lacks Vision

By Adam Pope October 2, 2008 Issue

It seems the world just can’t get enough of Shia LaBeouf. With the possible exception of Robert Downey Jr., no one has had a bigger year as an actor in 2008 than LaBeouf. Eagle Eye, teams the youngster with Michelle Monaghan, whom audiences will remember as the kidnapped wife of Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible III. Luckily, there is no love story present in Eagle Eye since neither actor has ever shown any skill at pulling off a convincing love scene (see Transformers). Director D.J. Caruso instead chose to focus on impossible, ludicrous stunt work to propel the film.

Jerry Shaw (LeBeouf)—the epitome of a troubled slacker type—gets a mysterious phone call from a female voice telling him to do exactly as he is instructed or he will go to prison. After a monetary explosion in Shaw’s bank account and the appearance of every terrorist tool on the market in his apartment, the FBI soon comes after our hero in the form of Special Agent Tom Morgan (Billy Bob Thornton).

Soon, Jerry meets up with Rachel (Monaghan) a divorcee with a young child who is being similarly blackmailed by the all-powerful Voice. The film soon devolves into a 45-minute chase sequence crammed to the brim with both the action of one of the Bourne films and the over-the-top explosions and mindless chaos of any action film from the mid-90s. The Voice is completely in control of every facet of technology—traffic lights, barges, trash-compactors, cranes, cameras and, most important, cell phones can all be used to perfectly manipulate any situation to cause Jerry and Rachel to arrive precisely where they need to at all times, ultimately steering them towards the Pentagon.

And that really is all there is to Eagle Eye. If you somehow find a way to detach your mind from the utter lunacy that you are seeing, you might find some way to enjoy the film. It is yet another in a long line of killer technology movies that fails to inspire any real suspense. Once the audience realizes that Jerry and Rachel are not going to be hurt by any of the random events erupting all around them, all tension goes right out of the window.

Caruso does his best to build emotion by showing numerous close ups of LeBeouf crying or Monaghan vehemently claiming she will do whatever it takes to save her child, but the end result is the same stale over-budget action film that we see every year towards the end of the summer. If there really is some force out there watching all media and monitoring our cell phones, you can rest assured that they wouldn’t be wasting their time on Eagle Eye. It is a film that sees all angles, attempts to reach all emotions, and is completely all failing.

The Beachcomber Remembers Paul Newman

Our Roving Rogue, Bill Campbell, cited 1973’s Best Picture Oscar-winner The Sting as a personal favorite. “Who can ever forget the tweak of the nose followed by what happened next?” says Campbell. “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid would have to be next, but then there’s The Hustler… What an amazing man, and what a man of charity.” Pepper James has a soft spot for Martin Scorsese’s Hustler sequel, The Color of Money, for which Newman won his long-overdue Best Actor trophy.

It’s hard to pick a favorite from an actor whose great films were many (Cool Hand Luke, Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, Fort Apache the Bronx, et.al.) and whose presence elevated a number of mediocre films (Road to Perdition, The Hudsucker Proxy, Message in a Bottle) to watchable. As a teenager, I was particularly moved by Newman’s portrayal of an alcoholic lawyer in Sidney Lumet’s 1982 classic The Verdict, though his low-key turn in 1994’s Nobody’s Fool may well have been his personal best.

- C.M.

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